Mokushiroku Arisu v1 (LN)
Mokushiroku Arisu (Apocalypse Alice) is a fantastic first volume for another series penned by one of my favorite writers, Kagami Takaya, (who also does
Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign and did
Legend of the Legendary Heroes)), and has art from designer and artist of
BlazBlue, Katou Yuuki.
The plot and its focus on a disease that only affects girls turning them into labyrinths of varying difficult is unique. I found the concept fun and actually intense for the world and development of magic throughout. On the labyrinth front having the character go into the areas affected by these girls and then dungeon crawling gave it a feeling of feeling like a video game brought to life and merged with the real world. Though it is a serious affair as people can die and the girls ultimately must be killed within the time frame or else the world around is affected as well as the ones dungeon crawling.
Cast has a unique lead who has a personality that I love in series but one people hate, the arrogant and kind of meanish personality, Shinnosuke Arisu, who seems to be the most competent of the magic users thus far even beating out the teachers at the school. With friends by his side by the end of the volume like Hishiro Shiro, best blade user and the most friendly of the cast (forcing Shinnosuke to do all sorts of friendly things and join his crew of friends who love to bond, making it hilarious to see Shinnosuke do these things awkwardly), the LN remains fun.
Mokushiroku Arisu was a fun ride and one offering much promise to the light novel world. Dungeon crawling is fun as well as the level of friendship spread throughout. The Headphone Fuzz mechanic for magic and the different types and things it can do is fairly mindblowing at times. The way it is described though makes me think of Hamatora just for the way they put headphones on (like
Hamatora's Nice) and then tapping before launching their attack. I kind of want the same anime studio to work on this eventually as it did seem popular enough to make the charts on the LN list anyway. But on the magic scale enhancing speed through accelerating in split seconds, using elemental type water moves, and enhancing weapon size and power, does still give it all the things I enjoy in magic series.
Cant wait for V2 in mere days.